


Between the crosses, row on row

by ScribeofArda



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: I wrote a brief thing for the centenary of the end of WWI, M/M, Remembrance Day, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeofArda/pseuds/ScribeofArda
Summary: In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.A brief moment, a hundred years after the end of the Great War.





	Between the crosses, row on row

**Author's Note:**

> Today marks a hundred years since the guns fell silent and the first world war ended. In the UK we commemorate this day by wearing red poppies, which grew in the fields along the frontline. Wreaths of poppies are laid at every memorial in every village in the country.
> 
> I watched part of the memorial service that took place in London this morning, and then this evening I watched tonight's episode of doctor who. An hour later, and I had written this. It is very little in the grand scheme of things, but it is something more to commemorate all the people who gave their lives for the world we currently have.

The wind stirs up the dying leaves scattered on the pavement, flurries of brown across the grey. They crunch slightly under their feet, trapped for a moment until they step forwards and the wind catches them again. Another gust, and a few more fall from the trees above their head.

It’s dark now. Most people left the square hours ago, huddled in their coats, sights already on the Christmas decorations beginning to line the windows down Oxford Street. Only a few remain now, hunched in their coats against the chill of the wind. Nobody talks to each other. This time isn’t for the onlookers, the civilians who come to pay their respects without really knowing what it is they are saying.

This time of evening, the night drawing ever closer to curl around them and pull them close, this is for the people who already know.

They stop in front of the memorial, hands clasped tightly together to ward off the chill. Wreaths cover the stone at the base, red poppies spilling over each other until the individual flowers are barely distinguishable in the dim light from the street lamps. The wind stirs through them, the rustle of plastic just audible.

“It seems so little,” one murmurs. “Wreaths, a Church service, a few songs played, and then they all move on the next day. It doesn’t seem like enough.”

His companion shrugs, tucking his chin into his scarf. “Would anything be enough?” he asks. “Could we do anything to remember the people we’ve lost properly?”

The first man sighs. “I suppose not,” he replies softly.

They stand there for a few minutes more, quiet falling between them. The memorial is bathed in yellow light from the street lamps, the poppies glinting. For a moment, as the winds stirs through them and the light catches them just right, there is the echo of flames across the carpet of red, the bright lights of shell fire and the flash of a rifle, the glint of barbed wire under torchlight. The echoes of memories, immortalised in song and poetry and film but only ever a shade, an incomparable shade to what has been lost to time.

“It could have been us,” the first man says softly.

The other laughs, a soft voice in the darkness. “We are a little too young for the great war,” he replies.

“You know what I mean,” the first says, no heat in his voice. “It could have been us, a thousand times over. I could have never made it out of Russia. You could have never made it through the war and the CIA.” He sighs, his fingers tangling with his companions. “It could have been us.”

The wind is picking up now, and it catches one of the wreathes, sending it skittering a little ways across the road. He goes after it, picking it up carefully and setting it back in place at the base of the memorial. He stays knelt down, hand gently straightening out the creases in the poppies.

“So many people,” he murmurs. He looks back up at his companion, blond hair catching the light of the street lamps and gleaming, just for a moment. “How many of them died, alone and forgotten?” he asks. “How many lay there wondering if they were ever going to see home again?” He sighs again, looking back down at the wreath. The poppies slide back into place under his hand.

“We both know what that’s like,” he murmurs. “For so many of them, to be so alone…” He shakes his head. “And this is all we can do. Wreaths of poppies.”

“There are wreaths of poppies in every village across this country,” the other says. “At every memorial. There are children wearing them for the first time today, and their parents sit them down and tell them the story of the great war. People write poems. They build sculptures, sing songs and make art for people they never knew who were dead long before they were born.” He tucks his hands into his coat pocket, staring down at the wreaths. “It isn’t just poppies, Peril.”

He sets the wreath back in place, hand lingering, brushing over the poppies as he gets to his feet. “People are already forgetting, Cowboy,” he says quietly. “A few decades from now, and who will come here at night?” He glances around at the other people quietly standing watch. “Who will come here to stand vigil for them, to let them know that they changed the world? So many people dying forgotten and alone. So many who’s names we don’t even know. And eventually nobody will remember enough to know why we used to place poppies here every November.”

“They will be remembered for a very long time,” the other replies, tangling his fingers with his again. “They changed the course of history. All of them, even the ones buried in unmarked graves or the ones whose bodies they never found. That means something. That will always mean something.”

“They won’t be remembered forever,” he says quietly. “Nothing is.”

“That’s okay,” the other replies. “They don’t have to be. Nothing we do will be able to honour them as they should be, and nothing we do will make sure they are remembered forever. But it’s okay. There are worse things, then to be granted that peace.”

He looks down at the wreathes, at the red spilling out across the stones. There are echoes of gunfire carried on the air from the west, the sound of cannons overhead, the explosions lighting up the night sky. The sound of men running through trenches, mortar fire overhead and mines underfoot, the clink of barbed wire in the wind. The stench of mud, and of cordite that stains hands, the metal tang of blood on the tongue and the warmth of it under shaking hands.

The sound of someone singing on a clear night, the stars bright overhead as the mortar barrage ends and the smoke clears, a song carried out all the way from a small village in England to the middle of France. The scratch of pencil against paper, aching hands fumbling in the half-light of the morning to get the words down before they disappear under the mud again.

The quiet hiss of a kettle as someone makes tea.

Rows upon rows of crosses stretching out across green fields, still pitted and marked from shell fire a hundred years ago. Bright splashes of red against the white stone, a carpet of poppies stretching from the trenches and those pitted fields all the way to London, a hundred years later. The echoes of a promise, just audible beneath the gunfire.

He kneels again, and pulls a small sprig of poppies from his coat pocket. “I don’t think the stories get it right,” he says quietly into the darkness. “I don’t think people have the capacity to remember the horror of it, not really. But some of us can guess at it. Some of us have known similar things.”

He places his sprig of poppies down, tucking the stems into a wreath so the wind doesn’t catch them and blow them away. His companion kneels down beside him, his own poppies in his hand. “There are worse things,” he says again, his voice soft, “than to be granted that peace.”

They stand together, stepping backwards and into the shadows between the street lamps. Both straighten, standing to attention and raising their hands in salutes they have not held for a long time. For a moment they are little more than silhouettes, dim in the darkness as they salute the ones who came before them.

The moment passes and fades, swept away by the chill November wind.

“Let’s go home, Cowboy,” he says, turning and pressing a brief kiss to the other’s lips.

Their hands find each other’s and their fingers tangle together. They turn and walk away, disappearing into the shadows down the road. The Cenotaph is behind then, the white stone glowing softly in the yellow light of the street lamps. The wind curls through the poppies at its base, a quiet murmur rustling through the flowers as they gleam, ever so briefly, in the light.

A hundred years and a few hours ago, and the guns fall silent.

_Take up our quarrel with the foe:_  
To you from failing hands we throw  
The torch; be yours to hold it high  
If ye break faith with us who die  
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  
In Flanders fields.

**Author's Note:**

> _They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:  
>  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.  
> At the going down of the sun and in the morning,  
> We will remember them._


End file.
